Conrad and Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge. Tom Bower
He will arrive in Chicago preceded by two damning findings: the first by a court in Delaware, the second by a special committee of investigators appointed with his approval. The investigators’ withering 513-page condemnation of Black’s business methods would have destroyed most men, and his vigorous protestations of innocence have won him some sympathy. The riddle is just how he has found himself in this position. In the search for an answer it is important to understand his marriage to Barbara Amiel, and her own behaviour.
Beautiful, intelligent and vivacious, Barbara Amiel appeared over the years to follow her husband in promoting herself and her opinions. In Toronto, London and New York she became famous for aggressively advancing her libertarian, conservative and politically incorrect philosophy. Exceptionally, she based much of her distinctive and lauded journalism upon her own remarkable life, provocatively describing her personal experiences, especially in relation to drugs, sex, personal relationships and cash. Her 1986 article ‘Why Women Marry Up’ is one of her many prophetic, self-fulfilling accounts of seeking fame and millions which would climax sixteen years later in her immortal admission, ‘I have an extravagence that knows no bounds.’ Quite consciously, she invited the public to examine every aspect of her private life, and in turn wrote revelatory accounts of others’ lives. In many respects she is a unique woman, which was precisely her attraction to Conrad Black.
However, to blame Barbara Amiel for Conrad Black’s apparent downfall would be simplistic. Black is responsible for his own fate, although Amiel undoubtedly influenced the circumstances which have led to him facing his destiny in a Chicago courtroom. She is, of course, not accused of any crime; nevertheless, she did closely accompany him during his meteoric rise after 1992 in London, New York and Toronto. She not only shared his desire for the spotlight, but assumed serious responsibilities in the management of his six hundred newspapers. As a well-paid director of his corporation, she influenced the choice of the papers’ editors, their policies and their appearance. Barbara Amiel is not known ever to have cautioned the staff of those papers to restrain their invasion of other people’s privacy. Her power was never in doubt, not least because she allowed no one to forget her status. In recognition of her contribution, the corporation paid over $1 million of her salary to Black-Amiel Management, an offshore account in Barbados. She also earned substantial sums from stock options, and charged the corporation millions of dollars in expenses for the use of jets, homes, staff and much more. Her conduct made her an important factor in the series of events which has led Lord Black to what for him will be a unique experience – judgement by a jury of twelve common men and women.
Conrad Black’s story is emphatically not a Shakespearian tragedy or the struggle of a flawed hero. In every respect, Black was consciously responsible for his conduct. In the course of the last twenty years, there is no evidence of him confronting dilemmas or crises of conscience about right and wrong. On the contrary, he is proud to have followed his principles. Both Lord and Lady Black are convinced of his inevitable acquittal. But that judgement depends upon an anonymous jury, and there is more than irony in the fact that a man who isolated himself amid privilege throughout his life should now have to rely on the common people to decide his fate. Considering his disdain for the mass censure he has received over the past months, Conrad Black’s certainty that he will be acquitted by a jury is remarkable. The well-educated subject of this book has not taken to heart the lines of John Dryden, the seventeenth-century poet:
Nor is people’s judgment always true:
The most may err as grossly as the few.
The Wedding, 26 January 1985
‘Six months at most. I give this marriage just six months.’
‘Come off it, Posy. How do you know?’
‘Because I lived with David Graham in London. Every night he came home with a different girl.’
Posy Chisholm Feick, a sixtyish Canadian travel writer and socialite, had grabbed the attention of every guest around the table: ‘They came in every shape and size. Even a black girl with a shaved head.’ The band struck a high note in the crowded ‘Stop 33’ room at the summit of Toronto’s Sutton Place Hotel, but, encouraged by her audience, Posy continued uninterrupted. ‘I saw them every morning. He’d rush off to work, leaving the girls to struggle by themselves.’
‘So what?’ asked Allan Fotheringham, the veteran political columnist.
‘Well,’ smiled Posy, with the confidence of an expert in sex and marriage, ‘one of them said he’s a lousy lay. Barbara won’t like that.’ Eyes narrowed and mouths pursed.
‘Just hold on for the ride,’ smiled Peter Worthington, the editor-in-chief of the Toronto Sun.
‘Barbara wants what’s best for Barbara,’ added one man, recalling painful rejection. ‘She’s too restless,’ sighed another failed suitor. ‘And David’s so boring,’ chimed a new voice.
‘Let’s take bets,’ said Posy, spotting the bride swaying in her white, backless Chanel dress. Posy’s wager was certainly high, but the loud Latin American music and the alcoholic haze prevented anyone hearing the size of Allan Fotheringham’s risk. ‘It won’t last long,’ shouted Posy, throwing back another glass. ‘She’s a wild and crazy girl,’ said Fotheringham, speaking with the benefit of carnal experience of the bride. ‘She’s got an eye for the big chance. This is it. She won’t let it go.’
The forty-four-year-old bride now interrupted the jousting at the large round table. After fluttering around a room filled with sober politicians, famous millionaires, rich professionals and Canada’s media moguls, including Conrad Black and his wife Shirley, Barbara Amiel appeared to welcome the sight of the group of rowdy journalists. For twenty years that crowd had represented her social and professional background, but her marriage indicated her removal from them. Famous throughout Canada as an opinionated columnist, Amiel had just resigned as comment editor of the Toronto Sun to join her third husband, David Graham, in London. The rollercoaster years of drugs, adultery and emotional mayhem were over. She was, she had admitted, ‘ashamed of my personal life’.1 She had shared beds with too many ‘beach boys and wildly unreliable bohemians’. They were good for ‘steamy novels but short unions’.2 Years of notoriety would be replaced by domesticity, motherhood and fidelity.
For the uncynical at the wedding party, Barbara Amiel’s choice was understandable. David Graham was handsome and seriously rich. Shrewd investments in the fledgling cable network business had produced a company worth US$200 million,* and homes in Toronto, New York, Palm Beach, St Tropez and London worth another $100 million. For the former middle-class north London girl known to plead, ‘My father was very poor and unemployed,’ the prospect of returning home in style was irresistible. Graham’s motives also appeared unimpeachable.
Barbara Amiel was renowned not only for her beauty, wit and intelligence, but also, among the favoured, as a remarkable sexual companion. ‘Sex is great with Barbara,’ confirmed one of her wedding guests. ‘A great body, and her breasts are big and beautiful. Like lovely fried eggs.’ ‘Yeah,’ agreed another connoisseur. ‘She wants to be admired for her brains, but she keeps pushing her breasts into men’s faces.’ Amiel would be the first to admit that sex, ‘the key to our entire being’, was her trusted weapon.3
During the evening, for most men gazing at a seemingly tough, unemotional personality, Amiel’s thin waist, long dark hair and Sephardic looks were alluring but unobtainable. Only David Graham and her former lovers realised that her harshness was a masquerade, honed during a tough battle for survival, to gain protection from rejection. Behind the façade the bride was a vulnerable woman,